The electrical systems in residential, commercial and industrial applications usually include a panelboard for receiving electrical power from a utility source. The power is then routed through protection devices to designated branch circuits supplying one or more loads. These overcurrent devices are typically circuit interrupters such as circuit breakers and fuses which are designed to interrupt the electrical current if the limits of the conductors supplying the loads are surpassed.
Circuit breakers are a preferred type of circuit interrupter because a resetting mechanism allows their reuse. Typically, circuit breakers interrupt an electric circuit due to a disconnect or trip condition such as a current overload or ground fault. The current overload condition results when a current exceeds the continuous rating of the breaker for a time interval determined by the trip current. A ground fault trip condition is created by an imbalance of currents flowing between a line conductor and a neutral conductor which could be caused by a leakage current or an arcing fault to ground.
Arcing faults are commonly defined as current through ionized gas between two ends of a broken conductor or at a faulty contact or connector (“series” arcs), or, between two conductors supplying a load, or between a conductor and ground (“parallel” arcs). However, arcing faults may not cause a conventional circuit breaker to trip. Arcing fault current levels may be reduced by branch or load impedance to a level below the trip curve settings of the circuit breaker. In addition, an arcing fault which does not contact a grounded conductor or person will not trip a ground fault protector.
There are many conditions that may cause an arcing fault. For example, corroded, worn or aged wiring, connectors, contacts or insulation, loose connections, wiring damaged by nails or staples through the insulation, and electrical stress caused by repeated overloading, lightning strikes, etc. These faults may damage the conductor insulation and/or cause the conductor to reach an unacceptable temperature.
The present invention concerns detection of low current series arcs that occur within the normal operating range of household appliances and/or low current series arc fault detection that is within the handle rating of the protection device (e.g., a household circuit breaker).
U.S. Pat. No. 6,008,973 (commonly assigned) based largely on slope changes in the load current and does not look at specific sub harmonic, broadband noise content and/or utilize load recognition. In contrast, this invention uses sub harmonic content, broadband noise and load recognition to set thresholds and select arc signatures.
In our above-referenced application (pending U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/107,621, filed Mar. 27, 2002) frequency was monitored at half cycle intervals for broadband noise, primarily in 33 KHz and 58 KHz bands. We have discovered that certain load types, such as a light dimmer load, have certain high frequency characteristics which can be used to develop algorithms to detect, for example, approximately what phase angle the light dimmer is set at and to use the appropriate arcing algorithms to detect arcing for that particular dimmer setting. We have found that the high frequency component of a typical light dimmer wave form will occur primarily on the rising edge of the current wave form. During arcing, noise is not localized to the rising edge of the current waveform, however. Therefore, this characteristic can be used to better distinguish arcing from normal operating noise. Also, in some load types, during arcing conditions, noise is present only where the current is non-zero; however, during arcing, currents are zero around the voltage zero crossings. High frequency noise is therefore essentially zero at these areas of the wave form. We have found that this generally holds true for any arcing in any type of load.
Furthermore, in the present invention, we have discovered that monitoring high frequency noise in a 20 KHz band at ⅛ line cycle intervals may be used to obtain improved load recognition using arc detection methods and apparatus described in the above-referenced parent applications.
The invention may be applied to residential, commercial, industrial applications for circuit protection against series arc faults.